venerdì 31 gennaio 2014

Laura Delano - Recupero dalla psichiatria

From a young age, we are conditioned to fear ourselves, to loathe our (socially defined) inadequacies and weaknesses and failures, to compare ourselves to others who seem to “have it together”, all the while working so damn hard to appear to “have it together” ourselves. We pursue this self-flagellation and inner/outer compartmentalization despite the compounding chaos that ensues from turning one’s life into a stage performance.

We are taught that our emotional distress means something is “wrong” with us, that our racing thoughts and eccentric behaviors are evidence of pathology, and that
if we stand a chance at acceptable existence we must “fix” these unacceptable states by turning ourselves over to those who’ve been trained to view us as broken. To them, we are but splintered pieces of human pottery requiring pharmaceutical glue, behavior modification, and cognitive “therapy” so that we can be shaped into something called “normal”.

Every moment offers us the opportunity to see through this carefully constructed, profit-fueled façade of social acceptability to the individual truths of our lives, where we are always acceptable, just as we are, and where our infinite potential and wisdom have waited patiently for us to make this discovery.

Within us every moment is an off-ramp from the highway of the “quick fix”, “high-functioning” fantasy of the so-called American Dream. Our socially ingrained self-fear is but an illusory traveler who’s greedily pushed its way into our minds and latched on for a free ride, and once we’ve pushed it back out, we will finally be free to leave behind that well-paved, freshly painted, fluorescent-lit highway to inevitable inadequacy, and take instead the bumpy, potholed road that may often be uncomfortable and slow-going, but that will lead us back to the beautiful, individual landscapes of our beautiful, individual lives.

The greatest prison is the one built within us, the one we can’t see, the one constructed with bars of fear. We fear our minds, we fear our emotions, we fear the experience of suffering, naming it a “disease” so that we can attempt to separate ourselves from it by calling it “abnormal” and “pathological”, and by numbing and eradicating it with so-called medicine.

We are taught to fear ourselves—to fear inadequacy, loneliness, difference, desperation, and pain—and to place our faith in Psychiatry and the “mental health” industry to “care” for us by pharmaceutically altering our brains and dehumanizing our identities with psychiatric labels. We need only look at the statistics to grasp how deeply we’ve internalized this teaching: one in five Americans takes a psychiatric drug, and rates are similar in other countries. I internalized this teaching, too, for thirteen years, convinced there was something wrong with me.

If we are to topple this oppressive institution—creating space in its void for local communities to build their own humanistic networks of voluntary support, counsel, and guidance, no talk of “mental health” or “mental illness” or “symptom” or “condition” in sight—we must begin by recognizing this fear within us, this insidious indoctrination that has so profoundly separated us from what it truly means to be human. Then, we must shift our focus to the world around us, where the true “problems” lie: in today’s society, and its various manifestations of oppression via racism, sexism, homophobia, intolerance of difference, the unbearable pressure of “the American Dream”, untrustworthy media, corporate greed, political corruption, a broken educational system that teaches children to accept and never question, a disease-inducing food industry, environmental devastation, poverty, violence, and war.

There is meaning in suffering. There is meaning in sleepless nights of racing thoughts. There is meaning in the urge to die. There is meaning in the experience of hearing voices, or believing oneself to be Jesus Christ, or feeling convinced that one is being watched and observed by the FBI. These are not empty manifestations of faulty brain function: they are messages from deep within us that should be listened to and made sense of, not eradicated with pills and electroshock and psychiatric incarceration. They are messages about the world we live in, and about our relationship to the world. I truly believe that the survival of our collective humanity depends on us beginning to listen to all that’s within us, all that we’ve been so afraid of.

To be human is to suffer, to seek, to fall, to rise. In a future world that embraces this truth, there will be no place for the Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical Industry. There will be no need to pursue the obliteration of emotional pain, because it will be embraced as a meaningful part of the spectrum of human experience. I have hope in this future, and I smile as I envision it.

Who is narrating your story? From whom did you learn the words you use to understand who you are?

For a long time, the outside world defined me— psychiatric textbooks and “mental health professionals” and advertisements for weight loss products and Hollywood depictions of “acceptable” and pill bottles and the mainstream media. Today, I strive to be the only author of my story, the words I use to describe who I am culled from deep within me, on my own terms, in my own way. Human words, not medicalized ones.

Let’s make obsolete the social institutions that pretend to know us, that break us down into clinical labels and lists and categories, that promise to have our answers, that give us a false but intoxicating sense of belonging and of being understood when diagnosed. Let’s make obsolete the notion that we must strive for an absence of emotional pain– that something is “wrong” with us if we suffer and search for meaning and purpose in our lives.

Psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual never knew me, white-coated strangers never knew me, psychotropic pills never knew me, and double-locked doors never knew me, for these inanimate and impersonal forces can never know what it means to be a unique and individual human being in this world, with a unique and individual life story.

Never again will Psychiatry narrate my story of suffering and emotional pain, nor, for that matter, my story of expansion, growth, and transformation. Today, I strive to be my life story’s only narrator.

The path of psychiatric liberation has been paved with searing, intense emotions; with confusing days of sorting out how to be in my body, my mind, and amongst my fellows; with the jolts and jerks and stalls and starts of an existence so newly unblocked and unmediated, so newly alive, with the chains of psychopharmaceuticals and psychiatric diagnoses shed over three years ago. It is a path that has been paved with grief and an acute awareness of loss, but most importantly, it is a path of regeneration. Of self-reclamation. Of rehumanization. I see it as a path leading us back into the drivers’ seats of our lives, and of our souls.

Along the path of psychiatric liberation, we come back to ourselves, to an authentic connection with our beating hearts, our vibrant minds, and the world in which we each exist—this world that Psychiatry has worked so hard to disconnect us from, pharmaceuticalizing our bloodstreams and psychiatrizing our identities by the many millions as it pushes on with its pathologization of humanity.

Looking to start a 'coming off psych drugs' mutual support group in your area? Check out the 'coming off psych drugs' section here, and email me at ldelano@recoveringfrompsychiatry.com if you'd like to join our Google group for those looking to start their own mutual support groups using our Boston model!
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39 commenti:

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